One of 2025’s very best movies is available to watch now

The star-studded throwback to a classic genre is co-written and directed by an Irish filmmaker, who spoke to JOE about how the movie came to be.

Co-written and directed by Irish filmmaker David Freyne (The Cured, Dating Amber), the fantasy rom-com stars Elizabeth Olsen (Wind River) and Miles Teller (Whiplash). They play Joan and Larry, a couple who've been married for decades, who pass away within a few days of each other.

The pair awaken as their younger selves in "the hub", a part of the afterlife that is basically a mix of a train station, hotel and travel expo.

There, they are told by their highly bureaucratic "afterlife coordinators" (played by scene-stealers Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early) that they can choose from hundreds of options on how they'd like to spend the rest of their eternity.

These eternities range from the more generic - beach world, mountain world or Paris world - to the more specific - including a version of Ireland where the Famine never happened.

Once they choose one of these worlds, however, they must spend the rest of their lives there forever.

Larry assumes Joan wants to spend the rest of her eternity with him.

That said, the appearance of her extremely handsome first husband, Luke (Callum Turner, The Capture), who died in the Korean War and has waited decades for Joan to enter the hub, throws a spanner in the works.

Who will Joan pick to spend eternity with: her first love, who was tragically taken from her, or her second love, with whom she had a stable decades-long marriage?

Eternity Review

Eternity is a near-perfect mix of rom-com and sci-fi storytelling.

Working from an acclaimed Black List screenplay with a great central hook, Freyne infuses the material with the same winning mix of deep emotion and fun, slightly edgy humour that made Dating Amber such a recent Irish classic.

The movie's vision of the afterlife as a bureaucratic waystation is a witty, visually sumptuous marvel. The sequences set there are absolutely overloaded with hilarious background gags that will make the movie a blast to revisit.

But on top of all these fantastical, overtly comedic elements is a very human and relatable story, which explores weighty topics like life, death and love (in many forms) in an offbeat way that still rings true.

The performances are immensely charismatic and likeable, which only serves to make the film's central dilemma all the more gripping and painful, because we know someone is going to get hurt.

While the film, as it nears its conclusion and ramps up the stakes, threatens to overcomplicate its ingeniously simple premise, it still manages to stick the landing.

This is because of the clear affection the creators have for their core ensemble.

Eternity Interview

The film's co-writer and director, David Freyne, came into the JOE studio to talk about his journey from working on Irish indies to making a starry American rom-com with renowned production and distribution company A24.

Eternity began life as a quite different, smaller-in-scale script by Pat Cunnane, an American with Irish heritage who worked as a speechwriter for former US President Barack Obama.

As Freyne recalls: "He's had this incredible career in politics. He met our producers, [brothers] Tim and Trevor [White], by giving them a tour of The White House.

"Then he was like: 'I want to be a screenwriter,' and that's where that began.

"He's a fascinating, amazing man, and also, I think, probably because of his political background, he's an amazing collaborator. He's not precious with anything, which was extraordinary."

Freyne's agent slipped him Cunnane's initial script, which the Dating Amber director was very taken by.

"I loved the idea of a woman having to choose between her first great love and last great love," he told JOE.

"Sometimes those great ideas are ones that you can't believe hadn't existed before... It was such a beautiful way of exploring what love is to you.

"Immediately when I was reading it, I was just thinking of my own life, my own relationships, my parents, my grandparents, and I was so compelled by it, and I connected to it so much. So that basic premise is what attracted me to it.

"My vision for this afterlife being this tourism expo where you get to choose your eternity, just came to me as I read it. It was one of those weird ones where my vision for it almost came fully formed very, very quickly, which doesn't happen very often, so it was so exciting.

"I immediately had all these ideas of what I wanted to do with it. So [my agent] convinced them to have a meeting with me, and it was before they'd seen any of my other films, and I think they just did it to him as a favour.

"I went in assuming I wouldn't get it, so I just said every issue I had with the script, all the problems, and for some reason, they really liked that.

"They really responded to my take, and Pat himself, who's an incredible person and collaborator, really, really loved my ideas."

While Dating Amber and Eternity share similarities - both are unconventional love stories that blend big laughs with human drama - the latter is much grander in scope.

We asked Freyne if it was ever difficult to convince A24 that he could execute his vision for Eternity, which takes inspiration from the work of legendary filmmakers like Albert Brooks, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Powell & Pressburger, Preston Sturges and Warren Beatty.

"I thought it would be, and I think at another home, it might have been harder. But A24 came on board really early, before casting, and they really liked my last film [Dating Amber].

"They loved the script, and I know I had a lookbook where I laid out how I wanted everything to look, and they just immediately had full confidence, which was not what I expected. It was incredible.

"So yeah, I thought it would be much harder than it was, but also I think tonally it's really similar to Dating Amber. It's a romantic comedy... It's just on a much bigger scale and set in the afterlife."

Elizabeth Olsen and director David Freyne on set

Freyne is full of praise for A24. Thanks to producing the likes of Oscar Best Picture winners Everything Everywhere All at Once and Moonlight, as well as early films from the likes of Ari Aster, Greta Gerwig and Robert Eggers, the production and distribution company's logo is now seen by many as a stamp of quality.

"They were incredibly supportive. I think they have a reputation as being filmmaker-friendly, and that's well-deserved," he raved.

"What I found really shocking is they had no script notes at any point, which is kind of not what you expect from... a studio.

"They just got behind our vision for the film, and we're very rarely on set. They came and visited, but they were very hands-off and incredibly helpful throughout the process.

"They're just passionate film lovers themselves. It was a really, really pleasant process.

"I wish I had some dirt for you, but they were great. Their reputation's pretty deserved."

Freyne made a lot of changes to Cunnane's initial script, though he feels the end project is "such a lovely reflection" of both of them.

On the alterations, he explained: "There's a lot of character changes. The ACs [afterlife coordinators] weren't really in there in the same way.

"The ending was completely rewritten, and then just how the junction looks, how the archive tunnels work, all that was kind of my doing.

"I always sent my scripts to Pat first before I sent them to the producers. What I always say is he created a skeleton, and I put the flesh on it.

"It became a real proper collaboration, which is what you want."

We did have to ask if the Famine-free Ireland eternity was Freyne's idea.

"I did write all the eternities. I wrote a lot of the eternities into the script. A Famine-free Ireland and Weimar Germany without the Nazis," he told JOE.

"I spent a lot of dog walks just thinking of ridiculous worlds for about a year before we shot it. I think we ended up having like 70-something by the end."

Freyne also noted that one of Joan's male suitors was "evil" in the first draft, which he changed, because he felt this would take the choice away from Olsen's character.

"[Larry and Luke] become friends in the film, and I think had they become friends earlier in the film, they might have been up for the threesome world. I think they might have gone for that," he joked.

"It was really important that both men were good choices, and that makes it heartbreaking for her and for one of the guys.

"I think it doesn't have stakes if you give her an easy out. That was one of the big things we worked on early on."

On the differences between making movies in America and Ireland (it's worth noting Eternity, despite being a US production, shot in Canada), Freyne notes:

"On Dating Amber, which was an extraordinary casting process, you got to audition all these young actors, and we found obviously Fionn [O'Shea] and Lola [Petticrew], who were extraordinary, and we found all the other brilliant teenagers from that casting process.

"Lizzie and Miles aren't going to audition for you, so that's the big difference. You're offering it to them and just praying and hoping that they say yes, and then you get your dream cast, which is extraordinary.

"Then you wait anxiously for rehearsals to make sure they get on. At which point, if they don't, it's too late. But thankfully, they did, and they had amazing chemistry.

"Yeah, it's a very different casting process when you're trying to get those bigger, bigger names, and you write for those bigger names.

"But we got incredibly lucky that firstly they said yes and they said yes to me, because I'm not like Scorsese... yet," he laughed.

"There was one day on set where we had all five of the [main] actors. Even though we'd done rehearsals with them in different groups, it was the first time we had all five of them at once, and everyone behind the camera had goosebumps.

"They were just electric, and they were like children together and bouncing off each other, and that is when you kind of know you have something special."

That said, Freyne was also surprised at the lack of difference between working for an American studio and working in Ireland.

He admitted: "I was nervous beforehand that it would feel big and it'd be a studio film where you have people breathing down your neck, but it ended up feeling surprisingly similar.

"It's a slightly bigger sandbox to play in, but you're still squeezing every penny. We really brought an indie mentality to it, where we had six weeks to shoot. We moved very nimbly and quickly.

"Very quickly, it just felt like another indie where you're manically running around getting everything you can and having fun.

"We had such an extraordinary time making Dating Amber, and I'm really grateful we had a similarly extraordinary time making Eternity."

As for what he wants audiences to take away from Eternity, Freyne noted: "Firstly, I really want to make people laugh and cry. We really wanted to make a film that was properly laugh-out-loud funny and audibly tearful.

"But what's been really lovely at the end of the screenings is having people come up to you and talk about their partner or their parents or grandparents.

"So it's nice that it makes you reflect on your life and maybe what love is to you. That's quite a nice thing.

"But if it just makes you laugh and cry, I'll be happy too."

Eternity is out in cinemas now.